Poisoning Daddy (1996) | Hacker News Reader

Poisoning Daddy (1996)

texasmonthly.com

58 pointssamclemens15 comments

Sorta OT, but Texas Monthly has so many great long reads like this.

Among my favorites are

Man on Fire http://www.texasmonthly.com/articles/man-on-fire/, the story of an East Texas civil rights activist who self-immolated in a parking lot in a town of just a couple thousand.

Sinners in the Hands, which deals with a controversial church also in a tiny town in Eastern TX http://www.texasmonthly.com/articles/sinners-in-the-hands/

and The Witness which is a pretty intimate look at one of the employees involved hands-on with capital punishment in Huntsville TX (very high rate of death penalties) http://www.texasmonthly.com/articles/the-witness/.

And really OT, but still interesting I think, Texas Monthly BBQ http://tmbbq.com is one of the best food blogs IMO and basically the only one I will read. It's very well done.

I'm not a big fan of many publications but TM is a winner in my book.

> Big city barbecue places are also a bigger time investment for patrons. Potential customers will need some freedom to take long lunch hours or maybe even take the whole morning off.

That's the #1 reason that I've never eaten at Franklin BBQ in downtown Austin. I can't afford to take an entire morning off to stand in line (and risk their running out of food before I can order).

But if I'm in the Lockhart area, I can stop in at Blacks and get some brisket and sausage in only a few minutes.

My wife and I came down from Dallas specifically to go to Franklin on a weekend, and in that context, it was so worth it. I got pretty ornery by the time we were inside and had been in line for about 3 hours. When we finally ate though, I don't want to say I would have done it all over again realistically speaking, but I almost would have.

And yeah Black's is great. Louie Mueller is similar, though they do get a little more hype than Black's, I think.

Kreuz market (also in Lockhart) also opened another kreuz market in Bryan, TX. That's a shorter distance from Dallas/Houston

For those wondering what happened next: While her conviction was upheld on appeal, ultimately the 28 year sentence became 7 years. Marie was paroled in 2003, and changed her name after release.

http://usedview.com/marie-robards-dorothy-marie-robards-paro...

I'm probably in the minority here but I found the writing be borderline sensationalist. Some parts of the story were clearly manufactured and twisted to add more flare and "omg" moments. Leaves a bad taste after reading.

Onto the article: I can't help but sympathize with this girl. Obviously her sentence is justified, but some people are completely oblivious to the types of mental deterioration one goes through when raised under such dysfunctional circumstances.

Slight non sequitur, I know, but Texas Monthly apparently really knows how to assemble a superb writing staff.

A handful of my favorite pieces of long-form journalism were published in TM and now here's yet another great piece, but from 20 years ago.

The show Forensic Files covered this story, and interviewed the article's author Skip Hollandsworth. The most fascinating of the murder stories he's covered (IMHO) is the the one involving the murderer who was obsessed with eyeballs: http://www.texasmonthly.com/articles/see-no-evil-3/

Claudius's confession of murder in Hamlet comes right after Hamlet has put on a play to prick his conscience. This girl's confession comes right after her friend reads Claudius's prayer.

Quite extraordinary that after centuries, Shakespeare's words could still prick consciences in almost exactly the same way and for the same reasons.

I find few poets and writers as affecting as Shakespeare.

You find yourself transported into the minds of the characters.

Doestoevki comes to mind, although I always found him to be best at describing a specific kind of mind (or at least it seems that way to me).

For weeks Stacey tried to keep Marie’s story a secret. “When you’re in high school, it’s, like, so important not to betray your best friends,” Stacey later told me. But tormented by guilt and bothered by the idea that Marie might be a far different girl from the one she knew, Stacey eventually contacted the police.

The morale of the story is that you should either choose your friends, or what you say, wisely.

I think maybe she did pick her friend wisely.

Actually, the morale in this story is pretty low.

Broken home, broken kids. I know that antagonizes a lot of people, some of whom found their role as parents incompatible with their preferred lifestyle... The truth is a bitch.

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